Blog for BrokeAss Games at GarageGames.com

Poser to Torque Workflow Resource

BrokeAss Games — 2008-11-07T15:52:53+00:00

This is not the resource... YET!
It is an announcement and a confession.

My team has talked about this for a long time and it's time to start walking the walk.
This wasn't an easy thing to post about, but I'm an indie at heart so time for the dirty laundry!

If you don't know about Poser, go to here and have a look...

My team and I will be posting a resource soon that explains the work-flow of exporting Poser characters to DTS for use in your Torque TGE and TGEA projects. The work-flow has been a guarded secret here at BAG for a long time now. Recent developments and joint efforts from Smith Micro, PhilC and BrokeAss Games now allow this to be done fairly easy. This is part of how we created our MACK and FACK characters.
There are actually many ways this can be done, but not all of them preserve the weighting, rigging, animation and other properties of the character. Some of the methods are VERY costly and out of reach to the indie developer (for example 3DS Max, Motion Builder, TrueSpace and my favorite, ZBrush!) and can also be a real pain.

We will be focusing on using very inexpensive software that is commonly used for game mods and indie games (such as MilkShape, FragMotion, and others).

Going forward, we are looking at the Collada export from Poser Pro, as well as a custom Poser-to-MilkShape Exporter plugin we're working on with PhilC.

Originally we used 5 separate applications, exporting, importing, saving, converting, re-weighting, etc. It was a pain, but it worked, we were able to get our characters, animations, textures and rigging out of Poser and into DTS format. Best of all, it was a solution that cost less than $500!

Poser handles the BVH file format for animations which is an industry standard motion capture standard for animations.
Nearly all of the rotoscope apps, body-suits and camera -based systems we have researched support this format and natively support Poser as well. Two of the most important ones to me are:
OptiTrack and PhilC's Rotoscoper.

Thousands of BVH animations are available on the web for sale and for free.
www.truebones.com from Joe McPeak (aka Mr. Bones) has over 2000 BVH motion capture animations alone. There is a free tool called BVH Hacker that can edit the animations and also help fit them onto non-standard skeletons. For $25 you can have the same functionality as BVH Hacker via a plugin directly inside Poser with PhilC's BVH Helper. PhilC has developed many models, plugins, tools and tutorials to make Poser very powerful and easy to use and all of them are indie priced and indie EULA friendly. He also has made a very powerful python scripting tool for Poser (Ritter? Anyone? Anyone?).

These can be found on Content Paradise which is the main commercial site for Poser content.

Chris Calef (a new member of our team) has released a resource that allows BVH animations to be loaded into Torque in realtime via script commands. His resource can also fit these animations onto custom and non-standard skeletons. Mixing Chris' resource and some voodoo from the Torque DTS SDK you can export these animations into DSQ files from within Torque.

We're currently considering merging this resource into our MACK pack and adding new GUIs to our character editor to make it a nearly turnkey solution for adding new animations.

One of the most heated arguments about Poser has been EULA and legality of making games with it. Smith Micro has been very interested in our work with Poser and game development and has been VERY supportive to us. Poser is already great to make characters and animations for games with, and future versions of poser may actually be geared towards them.

The only real remaining EULA issue with Poser... is the content. In Poser Pro there is SOME artwork that is royalty free and indie friendly (medium and low poly versions of the male and female included in Poser Pro are open source). Personally, I didn't really like those characters, but that is just my opinion. But it shows and they have confirmed to us that they are starting to "think indie" and understand that royalty free artwork would bring Poser to new heights.

So before you load a default poser character or run to Content Paradise and buy the latest Vickie or Jessica characters to put in your game, be VERY careful to read the EULA of the specific art you are using. If the product doesn't clearly show the EULA, contact the vendor! Its better to be safe than sorry.

PhilC's characters and models are very indie friendly in terms of EULA. The M.A.C.K. character includes source art that is Poser-ready and is recommended to get started with if you own the pack.

When we post the resource we will describe how to import your own or royalty free character meshes into Poser and avoid ripping off your fellow artists without their permission. So basically the age old battles and myths about using Poser for games is over and has been debunked. We are hoping this resource and our character pack will fuel a new genre of modular/dynamic character design.

The point of our efforts wasn't to get rich (and trust me, we haven't), but to change and inspire the way characters and character packs are made. After the resource is up we will be hosting a portal dedicated to our art and how we do it. Maybe it will evolve into something bigger, and not just "a character here, a character there" that is seen in most game dev communities.

Honestly no one team has the time to make enough characters to keep everyone happy, heck maybe not even 5 teams, so we hope by empowering our community it will create a flood of cheap/free character packs/addons/methods.

I would love to talk to any GG staff about what we are doing so that I don't wind up with basket of oranges at the apple festival.

Two of our current goals are to purchase a lowcost 3D scanner (we almost have enough from pack sales, keep them coming!) and a low cost motion capture system. If we achieve both of the goals, we'll be able to bring "the big guns" as fast and as cheap as we can and maybe I can even finish a title as an indie. ;)

I hope this sheds some light on the subject for anybody interested and gets the juices flowing for what's to come in the near future. There is alot I can't cover in this post but I am hoping for input and ideas from the community before we start our final release of this project.

Shout outs:
Jondo
Moe
Rex
Chris Calef
PhilC
Mr. Bones
Smith Micro, Inc.
Konrad Kiss
Chris Robertson
David Mathews
Brad Bolthouse
Erik Madison
Dave Young
Ashtara
GarageGames
The dozens of devs that tested and reviewed our work.

Thanks for your time and support, we couldn't have done it without all of you.

Return of the M.A.C.K.

BrokeAss Games — 2008-11-06T00:36:20+00:00

Male Advanced Character Kit v1.2 released

The first revisions to the M.A.C.K. system are now live at Garagegames!
Purchase it here.

M.A.C.K. now comes TGEA-ready.
It took us 3 months to get this ready, we had problems with reskinning the player, as well as some trouble getting mountEquipment objects to reskin properly. As we are fairly new to TGEA, we had a few people look at our build and try to solve the issues we faced. We still could not re-create the functionality of the TGE version.

We finally found a developer capable of resolving the issues, although he had to take a long road to get there, using his own code and a great community resource, essentially rewriting how TGEA handles materials and render layers. The final result is a system that works side-by-side with the stock material system, but offers MANY enhancements. Best of all... his code is included in the M.A.C.K. TGEA build.

Thank you so much, Konrad Kiss. You sir, are the man!

Konrad has agreed to describe his approach to the fixes here, since I could barely describe them in laymen-speak. We have also included detailed documentation on the texture-layer and wrappers Konrad developed for the kit.

Following are the fixes and feature-adds that come with this update:
TGEA compatible
Fixed a script error in Boots3
Fixed a misspelling in the filename of map.uniformpants1.jpg and map.uniformshirt1.jpg
Fixed the broken fingers in the sequence taekwondostance1
Fixed hip/spine rotations in the run sequences
Renamed rKneeBlock1 and lKneeBlock1 they were reversed
Added specular power adjustments to the Male Race UI.
Added new Walk animations (8 anims)
Sword shadow fixed
1st person view fixed for sword and crossbow

M.A.C.K. Released!

BrokeAss Games — 2008-07-23T23:46:57+00:00

Meet M.A.C.K.
The Advanced Character Kit was developed to meet a need for a character system capable of taking full advantage of Torque Game Engine's functionality. ACK was designed with a Torque MMO or RPG in mind, a game or project in which the character art must support a number of advanced features beyond what's been offered in the past. In addition, we have included working engine source examples and demonstration GUI's to make sure all developers, from beginner to advanced, can utilize the features included.

You get six pre-compiled male characters. Four are themed and have been optimized for beginners to drop in as an instant replacement characters (Military, Casual, Medieval, Post-Apoc). Also included is a nude pre-compiled character for reference. The 'Advanced' character build includes the complete mesh stack (all clothing pieces) and is capable of taking advantage of all features included in the pack.

Each character build supports skin-swapping per group, so you can choose from four races, and re-skin you clothing pieces, bodies, and mounted equipment separately in real-time for endless combinations... literally.

Disclaimer: It's almost too easy!
Though the ACK system is somewhat complicated, it has been set up to integrate easily into any TGE project (TGEA soon). You can drag and drop our entire example directory into your project and read through the differences to see what's going on under the hood. Developers can also simply drag the player data only, if they don't wish to enhance the source code of their project, but additional (that is included) code may be required to fully take advantage of the pack.

Clothing and Equipment
The pack comes with a stack of over 25 clothing pieces (such as pants, shirts, armor, robes, gloves, cape, apron, shoes, boots, belt, vests and more). Body parts and clothing all have their own groups for total control over hiding meshes to optimize the look and performance, as well as individual control over each part for re-skinning in-game (%obj.setSkinName() per mesh group). In addition to the clothing pieces that are pre-rigged and have 4 LODs, the kit also includes mountable accessories like: hair, facial hair, helmets, visor, bandoleer, and a sword for melee combat! All objects include script and source files, and were built to support skin-swapping.

Click, Click, Click
The pack also comes with a GUI system to demonstrate all of the features it's capable of, as well as give specific examples of the scripts and source code needed. You click a box and change Race (body and head textures), show and hide clothing pieces (mesh hiding), mount hair and other equipment (mountEquipment), and play and blend animations all from GUI in game: Out of the box!

Animation library > the rest
Over 90 animations included! Animation source files in Milkshape and Fragmotion allow the developer to make final tweaks to the sequences and easily export them with low cost: Milkshape3D. The system follows the BVH standard which has been heavily adopted by movie-industry animators who use motion capture. This highly flexible, heavily supported format is shared by the characters and therefore opens the door for additions of new animations, as well and many 3rd-party content providers that offer BVH related content. The ACK skeleton is set up with all the essential nodes (bones) for Torque as well as standard BVH ones. In addition, the characters have fully articulated hands with fingers. Developers can use the provided skeleton to easily integrate their meshes into the system (instructions included). This allows developers to take advantage of the many animations included with future meshes they create or license. (Of course, this only works properly with bipedal figures, such as: humanoids!).

Mod-ability
It's all there for you! From source files for animations, to UV Maps for the textures, this pack is built to be modded. If there's a job that requires a human male in Torque, M.A.C.K. is the man! Programmers will also get the source files ready for insertion into their build. You can pick and choose through the well-documented code and script changes.

Unleash the Features!
The source code and scripts included with the ACK system accomplish a number of fixes and enhancements to the Torque Game Engine that can save you hundreds of hours of coding (depending on your skill...). Let BrokeAss do the heavy-lifting on these features, fixes and enhancements to TGE (TGEA soon):

Server Side Melee System.

Custom Weapon Look Animations.

Modified SetSkinName works per group instead of for whole player.

Select from multiple player datablocks.

Random death animations called on each player death.

Damage animations on each hit.

Mesh Group Hiding (Essential for managing clothing stacks).

Terrain Materials updated to provide footprints and dust puffs.

Source
The files included have been organized with ease of use in mind. For this reason, a few .DSQs and textures may be repeated within the theme_Example builds.

Source File Types include:
Mesh/Skeleton source: ms3d, ugh, cr2, obj.
Texture source: psd, jpg, png.
Engine source code modifications

Ongoing Content Support
Following the same system that's described in the manual, BrokeAss Games in association with other developers can easily create and support additions to the system. These include but aren't limited such planned releases as: Skin packs (new face textures, new clothing textures), new animations sets, custom made mountable objects like Hair packs, and more! Developers also gain access to a private forum at www.brokeassgames.com exclusively for pack owners/developers.

Features

Art

* 6 prebuilt, optimized characters with 4 LODs. Character DTS files: Medieval, Military, Casual, Nude, Post-Apoc, Advanced

* Multiple texture sets make each character available in 4 different races. 6 characters x 4 races:
That's 24 unique, prebuilt characters from just the Male.

* 25 clothing pieces rigged to character. All code and script needed to mesh hide body parts and clothing as needed.

* 90 .dsq Animations included. All the basics are covered, and much more.

* BVH based (mocap) skeleton with full Poser and motion capture compatibility.

* .dsq Animation library cross-compatibility. Properly formatted animations will work with other ACK characters.
Custom meshes can be added and work with existing ACK animations.

* All source files included for art and animations.

Engine/Script

* Server Side Melee System.

* Custom Weapon Look Animations.

* Terrain Materials updated to provide footprints and dust puffs.

* Modified SetSkinName works per group instead of for whole player. Allows for skin swapping separately for each clothing piece, or body parts.

* Random death animations called on each death.

* Damage animations.

* Mesh Group Hiding. Essential for managing clothing stacks.

* Demo GUIs for customizing characters and playing animations

* Player Datablock Selection GUI

Documentation & Support

Online Manual
Private Forums
Anim List
Node List
Mesh List

Get it here!

Ruin Online - BETA5 - New Vid and patch notes

BrokeAss Games — 2008-02-10T19:12:02+00:00

Here's a look at what we've been working on in BETA5. Here's a pic, and a video link.

New Video

This patch contained a couple months worth of work from the team. Below are the most memorable of the fixes/adds:

Datablock speedloading optimization
Complete overhaul to how/where/when the game loads the datablocks needed to play. Now, when you reach the main menu all datablocks have been loaded for your play session. Zone travel and disconnect/reconnects should take 3-5 seconds (faster on some PCs).

Fixed particles for clients
Some clean up on the datablock loading fixed particle effects for clients. No more pixel smoke!

Live zone for main menu/character create/join server
The game menus now take place with a live zone running locally, which is also used for character creation.

Ported to latest TGE
The project is caught up with the latest version of Torque Game Engine. This in itself fixed a few bugs.

ArcaneFX activated
The ArcaneFX system by Faust Logic is back in game. Some spells can be triggered during combat, and some by using the number keys. (temporarily)

GUI overhaul
Reworked some of the menus/buttons to be easier to use. In game, the chat GUI was blocking access to the inventory slots, that's also been fixed.

Character LODs, optimizations and enhancements
Added LODs on our human characters/mobs which created a nice performance boost. Optimized the number of textures called by humans, another good boost.

Fixes to character animations
Tweaks to the rigging/weighting and some geometry adjustments to the player and clothing stack.

New wearables and mountables
Added new clothing: Soldier gear, Turban, and some female clothing.

New pistols
Moe's Gunz added over a dozen new pistols with varying projectiles, particle effects, damages, etc.

New firearm grip animations
Rifles now call a 2-handed rifle grip stance, while pistols call the pistol stance.

New Buildings
Moe's Buildingz added about a dozen new buildings (welcome back Moe!)

Punishment for leaving Mission Area
Leave the mission area, or fall thru the terrian - you die.

Weapons mount to your body when unequipped
This was a fun one for us... Now many weapons mount to your body when you unequip them, which gives you a super-saucy new degree of customization to your look.

Daggars and Polearms can be picked up
Part of the ongoing project to make all items in game "pick-up-able".

Pick up item equips to your hand
When you pick up an item in battle, it automatically equips to your right hand - which can be... handy.

Disabled Normal Maps on Interiors
Keeping performance high, holding off on eyecandy for a bit.

Disabled Shaders on Water
Same

Disabled mounting pets and vehicles
They got Broked...

More to Come

Plan: Ruin Online (Rant of a Savant Dev)

BrokeAss Games — 2007-06-28T11:53:24+00:00

Tonight I couldn't sleep, the candy canes kept turning into laser katanas and the suger plum fairies into bandit mobs with loot I needed.
I kept seeing one line weapon script fixes, shadow object masks and mouse world coordinates.
I've been doing this way too long. :)
So I got up and started looking for the Plan feature of the website here at GarageGames hoping it would help me sleep.
Either I couldn't find it, or it is gone.
I really liked the plan feature (the few times I used it) because it was specific to the project it was posted for and helped keep track over time in a blogish sort of way.
Now everyone has their own blogs or poject management solution it seems.
It's been a long time since the Ruin Online project started (3-4 years).
I've been thinking about this thread and this thread for the past few days very heavily.
Things have come a long way for BAG and Ruin.
Our team, engine and resources have grown.

We recently migrated most of our resources from our home made server farm sitting in a garage to a commercial colo, completed a new patch to fix some serious bugs preventing some people playing and updated our website and forums.
A decent stream of players from GG came (thank you) and I fear many weren't able to get in during the transitions.
Things are up and running smoothly again.

Ruin Online and BrokeAss Games are basically just the natural results of online gaming , indie software development and development communites.
Our team consists mostly of newbs learning via hardknocks and a few uber-newbs that crack on the newcomers like pwning face in counterstrike.
Recruitment was from our local area, online communities and our own beta testing/developement sites.
We have nearly no money for a budget still and the common indie pitfalls apply as well.
School comes and goes for the mouthbreathing teen prodigy developers that maintain and work various parts of our project.
People move, die, get married, burned out, etc.
Real life can always get in the way of an indie project with no budget.
But, if you build a community and a structure for the project and make it live, sometimes it will survive on it's own for periods when things get shakey.
You can do amazing things with a shoestring, you just have to decide that you are really going to do it and if you are serious, you'll want some backup so it gets done right.
Our team is weak in comparison to so many others in the standard way of looking at a developer team, but what we have is innovation, passion and a commonly visioned goal.
We thrive on out of the box thinking and innovation where lists of certifications, degrees are many times useless to us anyway.
Applications like Doom and ZBrush were born from innovation not a bible thick standards book or a market researched project outline.
While going to add a fresh coat of glow in the dark paint to the end of the tunnel for the newbs on the team, I noticed a tiny opening with a bit of light shining through that was never there before.
This indie thing can work, I promise.

The original plan was to write a real-time MMO FPS Fighter RPG with a "matrix like" web and chat interface to add another element of gameplay.
The "kewlest MMO eva" idea.
I honestly think it's still doable (and yes with TGE and TGEA variations).
Ruin Online is about a 1GB download so far and currently only supports windows.
The initial download is about 700mb and the rest is patches.
We started with TGE, bought every content pack and tool we could get our hands on (and even starved and ate ramen noodles to save up), applied every mod we thought sounded good at the time and seemed stable and smashed it all together.
Basically it's been 3 years of "Featuritis" and we put in alot more than the kitchen sink.
Currently in short terms it is TGE1.5, MK, MySQL, IRC, SMF with an endless list of mods.
We have a few features that we feel are unique (and some are just the logical result) like our BVH based characters and realtime combat system, our Sentinel Global Network (an artificial intelligent network that plays a roll in the game via bots, web, irc and the game database), a grinder's dream of an experience system (lying dormant in the engine waiting to patched out), a realtime web/database driven development interface and a "If you don't stop pointing that rifle at me I'm gonna kill you and everyone within 10 feet..." PVP system where everyone is attackable and friendly fire is a common accident made by newcomers and vehicle and horse theft are commonplace.
We try to remove as many standard gaming rules as we can to open up new possibilities of gameplay.
It's very "griefer" prone and honestly we kind of like that way.
"Players will have to learn to get along and be responsible for their actions".
It is not a finished game and is still early in the game development aspect.
The engine took years, now we are mostly focused on custom artwork and gameplay.

If you read all this and check out Ruin Online, feel free to hang around or contact us.
The download is big but it's worth checking out if you are developing in Torque.
You may be able to check out mods you are considering, how content packs operate in a live environment, dispell a few myths, see your own mod or art in a live game, and see how some broke newbs are trying to do all this.
We are currently trying to recruit new talent, make friends, get testing help and constructive feedback from other developers/gamers.
We have a bit of a free spirit "pwnr" attitude, but try not to let it put you off, it comes purely from our love of gaming and competing online.
The game was made for and by gamers, so every comment is valuable and considered.
Just showing up will help us make a better game.
And I know there are a ton of e-famed and lurker devs out there that would have a snippet or 3 that would make this project so much better if they knew what pieces it was lacking.

Ari (Lead Developer @ BrokeAss Games)

Stand and deliver!

BrokeAss Games — 2007-02-11T15:57:52+00:00

BrokeAss Games is now 6 days away from releasing the fourth live run of Ruin Online.
Scary times for a tiny indie group like us.
Not choking at the finish line and getting things out the door is always a test.
Our little crew tries not to let outside influences affect us (games excluded!) so we pretty much stick to ourselves (aside from attempting to give back what we take).
This is becoming a problem as we are so short handed and don't pay anyone.
We will have to start recruiting volunteers shortly.

Here are a couple of screen shots before it goes out the door.

Special thanks to Jondo, Mo "Danish Sweatshop", Rex (our newest member), Ashtara (Dream Games), PhilC (PhilC Designs) and Mr. Bones (TrueBones.com) for helping/working on our nearly completed characters.

Ruin Online Combat Example

BrokeAss Games — 2007-02-06T01:51:55+00:00

Realtime FPS + Fighter + RPG combat system.
This is a video of my producer/animator and I testing the new combat system on our live server.
TGE 1.5 base.
Watch the video.
YouTube Mirror
Ruin Online Beta 4 coming soon...

Genesis Human Character Pack (Early Adopter)

BrokeAss Games — 2006-11-19T23:41:42+00:00

We've OFFICIALLY released our first product. Thanks again to everyone that helped get this completed.

Early Adopter Owners we look forward to your feedback, as we plan on refining this product to make it the best possible. Please let us know what types of add-ons packs you would like to see for this series, we currently plan for armor, weapons and more skin variants.

Happy coding,

The BrokeAss Games Staff
www.brokeassgames.com

More pictures and info

Performance Video

First Ruin Online Demo Video

BrokeAss Games — 2006-11-01T07:56:08+00:00

This is our first In-Game Demo Video.

Download the video.

In House Character Development

BrokeAss Games — 2006-10-29T12:34:58+00:00

Wow, seems like forever since I've posted anything.
My little team of newbs is growing up.
2 of my team members and I have been working on some new characters for Ruin Online (www.brokeassgames.com).

Here is a rough video of some of the work.
Triangle Count: Around 4K.
The work is nearly complete and yes, those fingers are animating. :)

We have 35 finished animations (standard Torque Orc anims plus a couple for eye candy) and more are being made everyday.
The skeleton is a custom BVH compatible rig w/ 8 mount points, skis, cam and all the goodies.
We're adding jaw bones later this week for speech.
Biped is a great format but we felt BVH needed a chance for games too, and 3DSMax was beyond our budget.
The Cubix characters have carried us a long way and are a great asset to any team lacking a character dev team.
We are still using Cubix characters in our live online demo.
The new characters will be patched into Ruin Online Nov. 15th.
It just goes to show, decent game characters can be made on a small budget if you're willing to put in some elbow grease.

Ari (Lead Developer @ BrokeAss Games)

*Special Thanks:
Jondo
Moe
Ashtara
Mr. Bones
Rex (Your work was a valuable learning aid.)